What's left of the Empress Hotel building likely won't come down anytime soon.
 
Nearly five months after the north wall of the three-storey building at Yonge and Gould Sts. collapsed, the fallen bricks and rubble remain heaped on the sidewalk below, covered with tarps and protected behind construction hoarding.
 
The site, former home of the popular Salad King restaurant, has been under a city-designated unsafe condition order since the façade fell without warning at midday on April 16.
 
The Lalani Group, which owns the building at 335 Yonge, has been stymied in its attempts to tear down the badly damaged landmark. The company applied for a demolition permit on July 2 but city staff denied the request.
 
Late last month, council passed a motion that designated the building under the Ontario Heritage Act as having cultural heritage value. The red-brick structure, "[which has a] distinctive corner tower with a classically detailed mansard roof ... is the only surviving 19th-century commercial building along the east side of Yonge St.," the designation notice said.
 
"There had been no objections registered on the designation of the building," says area councillor Kyle Rae (Ward 27, Rosedale-Toronto Centre) who worked with city staff to protect the 1888 building from the wrecking ball.
 
Giving the property heritage designation means city council now controls alterations to the site and can enforce maintenance of the building.
 
Representatives of Lalani Group, which is based in Mumbai, did not respond to requests for an interview.
 
What happens to the Empress next is up to staff at the city's Heritage Preservation Services, Rae says. "They need to start working with the owner, given that [the structure] is designated and therefore falls under the heritage bylaw that protects buildings."
 
Staff must evaluate the building's structural integrity, he says. They will then direct Lalani Group "to begin the process of shoring up the building [so that work] can be done to remedy the lack of maintenance in regards to the building's heritage characteristics," Rae says.
 
In an email, city heritage staff say Lalani Group has been asked to hire a qualified heritage consultant to advise on stabilizing and restoring the building. Officials say the owner has not yet provided them with any information, so the city has hired its own consultant to assess the building's condition.
 
As for the mess on the sidewalk, it might be there for a while.
 
The debris "is largely comprised of the building fabric that fell into the street at the time of the initial collapse. It may be feasible to reuse some of this original building material for the restoration of the facade and should be assessed for this potential and then stored appropriately," heritage staff say.